


Home Will be Where the Heart Is

by imdeansgirl



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 00:59:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11635647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdeansgirl/pseuds/imdeansgirl
Summary: Liam, embarrassed, drops the bat back to its place and sighs. “You scared me, man,” he says. He shuffles forward and sticks out his hand. “You must be Brett. I’m Liam, nice to meet you.”Brett wrinkles his brow but nods, shaking Liam’s hand. “Pleasure’s all mine,” he says. He looks at both beds and desks. “I’m assuming the stripped bare one is mine?” he asks. Liam just nods, so Brett drags his bags over and lays them down on top. Then he turns on his heel and says, “Nice seeing you,” and walks out the door.Liam is immediately unsettled.





	Home Will be Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> so i am constantly accepting prompts over at [my tumblr](http://scisaacs.tumblr.com), and this just happened to be a Fantastic one i received. i love briam so always accepting briam prompts and probably other tw pairs to be honest. so shoot me an ask for a fic!! (pls do, i'm desperate and lonely).
> 
> also not that anyone cared/noticed but the title is from "home" from beauty and the beast lol

“Nervous pacing isn’t going to help you, Liam.”

Liam spins to face Mason, who’s sitting on the bed, and glares. “You don’t get to talk, traitor,” he says. He’s half-kidding. Only half.

Predictably, Mason rolls his eyes. “Me moving in with my boyfriend is not betraying you. It’s me, moving in with my boyfriend to move further in a relationship. We _have_ been over this, right? I wasn’t dreaming or something?”

They have been over it. A lot. But Liam is _whiny._ He flops down on the bed and sticks his head onto Mason’s lap. “But why do you need romance when you have friendship?” he asks innocently. Mason just stares at him. “Okay, fine. But what if my roommate is evil?”

“Your roommate will _not_ be evil,” Mason says surely. “Corey’s foster brother knows his adopted mom.”

For a moment, Liam just blinks. Then he says, “Those were too many connections.”

Mason rolls his eyes again and shoves his head off of his thigh. Liam laughs. “Shut up. Look, I’ll tell you what. If you want, I can be here when he shows up to move in.”

Liam thinks about it. All of his life, he and Mason have been together - they grew up together, they went to school together, they went to college together. And now everything is moving in different ways. Mason is moving in with his boyfriend, they’re majoring in different things. Maybe it’s time he started growing up too.

“Nah, I’m good,” he says. Even if he’s not.

\--

The room is dead silent. Mason has just left a few minutes ago, so Liam has just been staring at his wall and trying to do homework. He’s trying and failing. His English grade is slowly slipping by him, and he’s watching and letting it happen.

Suddenly, the locks in the door click. Liam jumps to his feet and grabs the bat sitting by the foot of his bed (making a mental note to send a thank you note to his uncle for the going away present). The door swings open and a man stands behind it.

He doesn’t look like a burglar or predator, though. He has suitcases at his feet, a key in the door, and a bored expression on his face. “Is that how you greet all your roommates, or…?” he says.

Liam, embarrassed, drops the bat back to its place and sighs. “You scared me, man,” he says. He shuffles forward and sticks out his hand. “You must be Brett. I’m Liam, nice to meet you.”

Brett wrinkles his brow but nods, shaking Liam’s hand. “Pleasure’s all mine,” he says. He looks at both beds and desks. “I’m assuming the stripped bare one is mine?” he asks. Liam just nods, so Brett drags his bags over and lays them down on top. Then he turns on his heel and says, “Nice seeing you,” and walks out the door.

Liam is immediately unsettled.

\--

Brett is… weird. 

Not weird like he keeps taxidermied animals in their room. Or like he’s in a cult. Or even like he talks in his sleep. (Although, those are the first things Mason asks when Liam tells him that Brett is weird.) He’s just odd. He keeps to himself most of the time, and when he does talk to Liam, half the time he’s snarky and rude and the other half he’s almost friendly. Corey says that Theo says that Satomi, Brett’s mom (and God, that is too many people to go through), says that Brett has no filter. He say exactly what he means and doesn’t feel the need to explain himself. So far, Liam has found this to be true.

When Liam is on the phone with Mason and complains about his grades, Brett says (unprompted), “Get a tutor.” When the pizza delivery guy comes to their room, Brett comments, “He was super hot. Like, porn level hot. Do we have pepperoni?” Liam puts on _National Treasure_ and Brett remarks, “That is the dumbest movie on the planet.” Liam doesn’t honestly have any idea what to do with him.

It’s two weeks since Brett has moved in. He’s at a class, Liam thinks, but he can’t be sure since they don’t really talk about… much of anything. He has no idea of the guy’s schedule or even what he’s majoring in. Liam’s just returned from his own class to find the door locked, so he assumes that if Brett’s not at class, he’s out somewhere.

Meanwhile, his laptop crackles with noise. “Papi, I can see you fine,” he says. “You don’t need to adjust the camera.”

For two forty-year-olds, his fathers are inept when it comes to technology. They’re supposed to be at the head of the generation of technology, leading forward a new age of technological advancement. But no, he thinks, as he watches his father squint at the computer screen. Scott and Isaac McCall are like two old people stuck in two forty-year-old’s bodies. “Sorry, Liam,” he says with a frown. “Your Uncle Stiles set it up and I don’t know how to work the damn... _darn_ thing.”

Isaac sits next to him, drinking out of his Number One Dad mug Liam got him and wearing a scarf even though it’s barely October. He scoffs. “First, he’s eighteen, I think you can swear around him now.” Then he turns his wide smile on Liam and Liam suddenly feels homesick. “Second, it’s so good to see you, darling. How are you? When does winter break start?”

Liam chuckles. Every time he’s on the phone with either one of them, one of their first questions is always ‘when can you come home?’ or some similar variation. He’s always been close to his dads and even being a state away, from Pennsylvania to New York, rocks the typically steady boat that is their relationship. “Early December,” he answers. “And I’m fine.”

Instantly, Scott’s dark eyebrows knit together. “You don’t sound fine,” he says. Besides being very close to him, or perhaps because of it, they are also very perceptive and nosy. Of course his dad picked up on something being off. “What’s up?”

Liam glances at the clock and then leans into the camera. “My roommate? He’s weird.”

His parents just blink at him. Then Scott says, “Like white people horror movie weird?”

“No,” Liam says. “Like, no filters and stand-offish weird.” If Brett were white people horror movie weird, Liam would have already requested for another roommate.

His parents look at each other and shrug. “Maybe you just don’t know each other well enough yet,” Isaac suggests.

Scott smiles and says, “Yeah, when I met your father, I thought he was a total brat.”

“I was,” Isaac says with a shrug.

“And I thought your Uncle Stiles was a pompous dick,” Scott continues.

Abruptly, Isaac snorts. “He _is_.”

Scott rolls his eyes, but, still smiling, keeps talking. “What I’m saying is, just give him a chance. He could surprise you.”

Liam shrugs, but what he doesn’t say is this: _I have no delusions of Brett and I getting married or being best friends for life._

He chats with his parents for a little while more, then Scott remembers he has a shift at the veterinary clinic and they have to go. “Bye, Lilo,” Isaac coos. “We love you.”

His childhood nickname hits him like a punch to the gut, and he’s twice as homesick as before. “Love you too,” he mutters, grinning at them. The screen goes black and he shuts down his laptop with a happy sigh. His dads always manage to make him feel better, even if his roommate is… questionable.

He hears a snicker and then, “Lilo, huh?”

Whoops. He hadn’t even heard Brett enter. He slowly turns and bites his lip, his shoulders tense. Brett is sitting on his bed, eyebrows raised, his shoes and jacket already off, like he’s been there for a while. How did he not even notice? “How much did you hear?” he asks gingerly.

Brett smiles, one of the first one’s Liam’s seen from him, and shrugs. “Everything from me being ‘odd’ to ‘Lilo,’” he says, and Liam groans. _How did I not hear him come in?!_ “Don’t worry, you won’t hear me if you don’t want me to,” Brett says, like he’s Sandu or something. What Liam wants to know if Brett really thought that was the way to say that without sounding like a serial killer. “I mean, I think it’s great you and your parents get along so well. I don’t even know mine.”

That makes Liam internal monologue of pure screaming pause. “What do you mean?” he asks, frowning. “Mason told me that his boyfriend’s foster brother knows your mom.”

Brett frowns. Then he says, “That’s a lot of words coming out of a small person at once.” A flash of anger flares through Liam at the size jab, but Brett keeps talking. “Yeah, Satomi is great and all, but she adopted me when I was, like, fifteen. She was the only person unwilling to split up me and my sister. Before that, I had no one. I’ll never know who my real parents are.”

For a moment, there’s silence. He can tell that Brett’s never really told someone that before, and he wants to reach into the air and pick it out and tear it to pieces. He looks like he regrets saying it, even though Liam’s really _glad_ he said it, because Brett’s finally said something that Liam can tell was _real_. And then Liam can feel it: a fluttering in his chest, a clenching of his jaw, a tense swallow. He’s a nervous talker, got it from Uncle Stiles, and he’s never learned to keep things to himself. (He can still vividly remember when his uncle snuck him out to go camping, and Isaac and Scott were so mad at Stiles and Liam and it just made him nervous, so he just blurted, “I fell in a hole!” Stiles has never let him live that one down.) “I was adopted too,” he says. Brett looks up, raising an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. “Well, I mean, obviously,” Liam babbles. “Because I have two dads, but I went looking for my birth parents, reached out to the adoption agency and everything… They didn’t want to talk to me. Neither of them.” He shrugs, looking at the floor instead of Brett. He hasn’t even told Mason about that, and _certainly_ not his dads. “My bio mom’s new husband emailed me, said it was really hard on her to give me up and she can’t face me. I have two half-sisters in California, Alicia and Alyssa. They’re cute kids.”

He finally puts a cork on the word vomit and looks up at Brett, whose eyes are unusually soft and mouth unusually shut. He just sadly smiles at Liam for a moment, then says, “Guess we’re both just a little bit messed up, huh?”

Liam snickers and replies, “Finally, we have something in common.”

Brett outright laughs at that, seemingly surprising the both of them. Then Brett grins, real and bright. “Wanna go get some pizza?” he asks, and Liam finds he would really like to get pizza.

\--

As the year goes on, Liam’s beginning to find himself more and more comfortable around Brett. There is no problem as far as his personality goes - in fact, Liam thinks Brett is kind of funny. Liam laughs at Brett’s bluntness and Brett appreciates Liam’s underlying snark. It’s a great relationship.

The problem, now, is about Brett’s face, body _and_ personality. It’s all unbearably attractive.

It’s not like Liam can’t handle it; he’s had unrequited crushes before. (Garrett, third grade; Theo, fifth grade; Josh, seventh grade.) But he’s just so handsome, to the point where it’s frustrating. When he quirks his eyebrows or smirks or even calls Liam a dumb ass, Liam wants to hit something. Even when he calls him “Lilo,” it’s cute. (And he does that a lot.)

He can tell Mason is beginning to get tired of him talking about it. “I’m getting tired of you talking about it,” Mason says one day, and that really tips him off. They’re sitting next to each other in the middle of the school quad; Corey is at work, and Brett is back home visiting Satomi and Lori, so they’re hanging out. And Liam may, or may not, have been talking about Brett’s tattoo. “Dude, you wanna bang your roommate, bang your roommate. At least then all the UST will go away.”

Liam wrinkles his nose. “What’s UST? Sounds like slang for a bladder infection.”

“That’s a U.T.I.,” Mason corrects, rolling his eyes. “UST is unresolved sexual tension. You and Brett have it by the bucketloads.”

He feels his cheeks go red. Damn his fair skin - it always gives him away. “We do _not_ have… ‘UST,’” he says weakly. They don’t. Do they?

Mason stares for a moment. “You did _not_ just do air quotes,” he mutters, then sighs and shakes his head. “You guys most definitely have tension. Liam, he calls you ‘Lilo.’ No one but your parents get to call you Lilo. And Brett knows that, and he loves it. And he wants to bang you.” Liam attempts to protest again, and then Mason cuts in. “I’ll tell you what. If we get through the rest of the year and you and Brett haven’t had sex at _least_ once, I’ll give you fifty dollars. If you do have sex, you pay up.”

That sounds intriguing. Liam raises his eyebrows and asks, “You sure you don’t want to make it the next three years instead?”

“I’ll be surprised if you make it to next month,” Mason says. They shake on it.

\--

There’s a persistent knocking on the door. It must be pretty early in the morning, since neither of them are awake for their morning classes yet. “You get it,” Liam groans. Apparently, Brett hears him from his bed, because Liam hears the squeaking of the mattress and then the door clicking open and the knocking stopping. “Oh,” says the voice. “I was hoping to talk to you _and_ your roommate.”

Liam raises his head to see a girl looking at him, unimpressed, from the doorway. Then he looks over to Brett, who’s smirking at him, wearing boxers. Only boxers. Liam feels his dick twitch in his sweatpants, and thankfully he sleeps on his stomach. He groans and puts his head back down on the pillow. “Looks like it’s just me,” he hears Brett say flatly. “What do you want?”

She sounds sarcastic and annoyed, not at all like someone who should be banging on their door this early in the morning. “I’m Hayden Romero,” she says. “I’m head of the cotillion committee, and I’m also dating Tracy Stewart. I’m coming around taking a poll about the likelihood of you voting for her for class president.”

There’s a pause for a moment, and then Brett says, “Tracy? She’s in my gender studies class. Sure, I’d vote for her. And I could probably get Liam on board, since he doesn’t care.”

“Great,” Hayden says. There’s brief pause and then the door nearly slams shut.

Liam looks up at Brett, who’s frowning down at the paper in his hands. “Well, have a good day, I guess,” he mutters, and then looks to Liam. “We have a 25% off coupon for a couple’s ticket to the cotillion.”

He only heard half that sentence. “Put a shirt on,” he mutters, and Brett rolls his eyes but obliges.

Once the shirt is on, thank God, Liam gets out of bed and pads over, looking at the flyer. “Sucks that neither of us can use it.”

Brett snorts. “Or we can just go together.”

Liam whips his head around so fast that he thinks his neck nearly breaks. Brett’s eyes are wide, staring down at the paper, and he has the deep look of regret on his face that Liam saw a few months ago when they talked about their parents for the first time. “Um,” Liam says, because that’s all he can think to say. “What?”

“Nevermind,” Brett says quickly, and Liam thinks that it’s the first time he’s ever heard Brett try to retract something he’s said. “Let’s just get ready for class.”

He stands and walks to the door, already gone before Liam has the chance to reply.

\--

Things begin to get weird after that. Not just because Mason is constantly making snide remarks about the two of them hooking up, but because it seems as if Brett’s holding himself back. A lot. Which is really strange, because as he’s been told time and time again, Brett has no filter - he never has and he never will. Which is why it’s weird to see Brett bite his lip, screw up his eyes, and shake his head.

Liam feels so stupid. When he dies, he wants _Um, what?_ to be printed on his gravestone, just so that people will know that he’s a complete and total idiot who probably deserved whatever it was that he got. He has no idea what he was supposed to say to Brett potentially suggesting that they should go to the cotillion together, but he knows that almost anything else would have been better that _Um, what?_ For instance - _I’d like that. Do you mean it? It’s not that great of a coupon to be honest._ Okay, maybe not the last one.

A few days before the cotillion, he sees Brett linger by the tickets stand. He wants so badly to ask if he wants to go - but what if he’s misread this whole thing? He’s heard from Corey (who heard from Theo who heard from Satomi, because yes, they still do that) that he’s had girlfriends before - but that could have been a phase? Or he’s bisexual? Liam doesn’t know what to do. So he does nothing.

When Brett finally walks away, Liam sighs and turns to find Mason staring at him. The seat next to him is empty, he assumes that Corey went to go get some Starbucks or something. Liam blinks, taking in the frown and the angry set of Mason’s eyebrows. “... What?” he asks.

“You’re an idiot,” Mason sighs, shaking his head and going back to his homework. “A total idiot.” Liam doesn’t have the heart to tell him that this is something he already knows.

\--

The light dramatically shifts as Scott moves around the phone, trying to get both Isaac and himself in frame. “You wanna know what?” he asks, finally deciding to put it down on the kitchen table and have them look down at the phone. It’s an awkward angle, for sure, and Liam is positive that soon Isaac will have to amble off and get them both chairs to sit in, but for now it works.

Liam looks around one more time for his roommate, making sure, this time, that he’s not in the room. Then he turns back to Scott and Isaac, frowning. “I wanted to know how you guys were sure that you were into each other,” he says. “Like, I know Papi did the asking, but how did you… know?”

They both just stare at him blankly for a moment. Liam rolls his eyes. Then Isaac says, “Oh, you mean, like, gaydar?”

“Exactly,” Liam mutters. “Not the term I would use, per se, but yeah. Gaydar.”

His parents look at each other, frowning, and then they turn back. “You never really know until you ask,” Scott says, with a shrug. “It’s not like there’s some magical tell that LGBT people have.”

This is not what Liam wanted to hear. He watches as Scott takes off his glasses to clean them on his shirt and Isaac wanders off screen, presumably to get them chairs. He waits until Isaac is back in frame, both sitting, and asks, “So you just… ask? And hope you don’t get punched in the face?” Because that is a very real possibility here - getting punched in the face.

Scott laughs a little. “Well, I mean, I knew your dad wasn’t going to punch me in the face,” he says. “But yeah, I just kind of asked if he’d want to go out sometime. It was terrifying.”

“Not for me,” Isaac says casually. “I knew he was bi, and I was pretty sure he liked me, so I was just biding my time.”

Liam stares at his blurry picture on the screen, and Scott stares at him in real life. “You could have told me, you know,” Scott says.

Isaac grins. “What, and ruin the fun? Besides, how would I have worked it into a conversation - ‘hey, I’m Isaac, I like boys’?”

“Why didn’t you just ask him out?” Liam asks, because this seems like a very normal and rational question.

Isaac hums and says, “It _was_ twenty-five years ago, so I’m a little blurry on it, but I’m pretty sure that your Uncle Stiles informed me that Scott had just recently had his heart broken by a pretty girl, so I should wait it out.”

Scott rolls his eyes and Isaac laughs. “I’m going to call Stiles,” he mutters, and turns back to the phone. “Anyway, why’d you ask, Lilo?”

Once again, Liam looks over his shoulder. No sign of Brett, which is good, the sneaky bastard. He looks back and says, “I kind of like my roommate.”

“The weird one?” they ask in unison, then look at each other. Then they look back to Liam and Scott says, “The _odd_ one?”

“That’s the one,” Liam confirms. “We’ve been becoming friends and, I don’t know, I think he likes me back but I can’t tell for sure.”

They pause thoughtfully for a moment. “My advice is just ask,” Scott reiterates. “You’ll never know if he likes you until you ask.”

“Of _course_ he’ll like you,” Isaac fusses. “Who couldn’t love that face?”

Liam rolls his eyes. “I have to go,” he says. “Love you, Dad. Love you, Papi.”

“Love you, Lilo,” they chime, again in unison, and the screen goes dark.

He turns around, like he’ll find Brett sitting on his bed or creeping in the shadows or lurking in the doorway. None of this is true.

\--

It’s the night of the cotillion. Every ticket is sold out, and the coupon is ripped up and in the trash. It’s been a long year, and the end of the school year is only a few weeks away.

Liam’s lounging on his bed when the door clicks open, and Brett enters, throwing himself down on his own bed. “Today blows,” he mutters, staring up at the ceiling for a few moments before sitting up and beginning to take off his boots.

“You okay?” Liam asks, sitting up and putting his homework on the table beside him.

Brett shrugs. “I’m fine,” he says. “Just annoyed, I guess. All everyone was talking about today was the cotillion.” He looks up at Liam, bites his lip, shakes his head, and looks away. “We’re, like, the only people not going.”

And there it goes again, that weird thing. The lip-head-eyes thing he does when he’s holding back. He wants so badly to know what Brett wants to say, and then he feels it - nervous flutter, tensed jaw, swallow. And he can’t stop the word vomit before it’s all coming out in a rush. “Brett, do you like boys?”

Brett looks up, his eyes wide and his eyebrows furrowed deeper than the first time they met. “Uh,” he says. “What?”

Liam takes a deep breath and says it again, because he can hear Scott’s voice in his head, saying over and over: _Just ask._ “Do you like boys?” He asks slower this time, in case Brett didn’t hear him the first time.

He expects a ‘no’ or a ‘shut up’ or a punch in the face. He doesn’t get any of those things. Brett frowns and tilts his head, looking more curious than angry or upset. “Why?” he asks.

“Uh,” Liam says, and shakes himself. He won’t go with _what?_ this time. Not again. “Well, I really, uh, like you. A lot. And I was just - when you said we should go to the cotillion together, did you mean it? Because I would’ve said yes. If you meant it.”

Brett just stares at him for a long moment. And then a smile, a true and big grin, breaks out over his beautiful, beautiful face, and Liam is taken aback. “I meant it,” Brett says, nodding. “Every word.”

Slowly, Liam feels his own face begin to smile. “Cool,” he says, because apparently he’s used his intelligent word quota for the day.

They both look over to the trashcan, where the bright pink piece of paper Hayden had handed to Brett lays crumpled up under some scrap paper and what Liam assumes is a wad of gum. “Shame we never bought those tickets,” Brett says.

“We would’ve had fun,” Liam admits.

Then Brett looks at him, the same furrow in his brow and smile on his lips. Liam’s just about to ask what he’s thinking when Brett says, “Do you trust me?” After a moment, Liam nods. “Great.” Brett stands abruptly and goes into his closet. He pulls out a big, clunky radio, and smiles at Liam. “Follow me,” he says. Liam doesn’t even hesitate.

\--

They walk to the big hall in which the cotillion is being held, only a few blocks away from their dorm building, and Brett comes to a stop. Then he plugs in the radio and puts on whatever station he has on preset, slow and sensual jazz music coming from it. Then Brett turns to him and smiles. “Dance with me, Lilo?” he asks.

Liam, meanwhile, is too stunned to do much of anything. He looks from Brett to his bare socks to the radio to his own tattered pajamas. “What a romantic,” he says, instead of anything that could be misconstrued as real feelings. “Do you do this with all the boys?”

“No,” Brett admits, “but I did see it on a _Saved by the Bell_ episode.” He shakes his hands, which are poised for Liam to dance with him. Liam rolls his eyes and laughs, but comes forward into Brett’s arms all the same.

They dance for a while, holding each other at a distance and looking into each other’s eyes, and Liam counts the colors of Brett’s eyes. But eventually the tension melts, and Liam tucks his head onto Brett’s chest and Brett holds him tighter. “Do you feel stupid to know that we could have been like this for months?” Liam mutters. “Because I do.”

“Imagine how useful this would have been in winter. Body warmth.” Liam laughs and pulls in tighter.

Eventually the clock in the quad strikes, and it’s eleven o’clock - half an hour until campus curfew. The dance would be ending in a few minutes. Liam sighs and pulls back. “We should go back,” he says. “It’s late.”

Brett nods and heads over to the radio, wrapping up the cord. When he’s done, he picks it up and moves to begin the walk home. Then he pauses and looks over his shoulder at Liam, saying, “You know what? I’m glad we didn’t go. Tonight was perfect.”

Liam smiles broadly, and, in some move of stupidity and braveness, strides forward and cups Brett’s face in his own. His lips are soft and supple, and his stubble scratches against Liam’s chin. “There,” he says. “Now it’s perfect.” Brett grins.

\--

A few weeks later, after end of the year exams are finally over, Liam and Mason go to lunch. They’ve barely sat down and ordered before Mason begins speaking. “Well, I don’t know how you managed to avoid it,” he says. “But you did. I owe you, man. I really thought you and Brett would have caved by now. I mean, I would have - have you seen him?”

Liam sighs and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his wallet and puts two twentys and a ten down on the table.

For a minute, there’s complete and total silence. Mason, for once in his life, is speechless. Then Liam asks, “I don’t have to pay you fifty dollars for how _each_ time we had sex, right?”

Mason looks up, sharply, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“I don’t think I have that kind of money,” Liam says. Mason nearly falls out of his chair.


End file.
